Potty Training Tips (Tuesday Tot Talks)

Unrelated but adorable picture:

Disclaimer: If you don't want to read a lot about pee, this post probably isn't for you.

I'm actually sure this post will only appeal to a small number of people who are actually LOOKING for advice on potty training, but I wanted to write about our experience so that I can remember it the next time around and because it worked SO WELL for us that it feels like I'm keeping a secret if I don't at least share my tips.

I should also mention at this time that Molly is about 95% potty trained and only wears a diaper overnight (and if she naps at the babysitter's house). She wakes up occasionally in the morning with a dry diaper, but not frequently enough for us to venture into night-time training yet. We are thinking we will night-train her when we have the new baby, since I will be getting up in the night anyway, and if she needs to get up to pee in the middle of the night, it won't be as disruptive as it would be now. She is 2 years 4 months old, and we trained her the week she turned 2.

Here are some questions I researched before we trained her and my own answers:

How do I know if my toddler is ready to be toilet trained?

I think we were lucky in this regard, because some of the other little kids at Molly's in-home daycare were training right before she did, and she became a bit fascinated with the concept. She would ask to use the toilet, and we let her. One day, we just decided to give it a go with her and we went and bought this potty and 2 seats for the toilets as well. In my opinion, it will help if your child can talk/communicate with you, but that's also probably unique to each situation. I've heard that girls are easier to train than boys, but I don't really have any experience other than with my girl :)

What is the best method for training?

This will be unique to each parent and child, but I'll tell you what worked for us. We committed to staying home for about 2-3 days (overall - this doesn't mean I didn't leave the house at all) and I asked her about every 10-15 minutes if she had to use the potty. She went around with underwear on or naked in the house for the 2 days and if we went to the backyard, the potty came with us. I'm not going to lie and say this part was easy, because we had A LOT of accidents in those few days, but she started to get the hang of it by the end and went longer stretches without using the potty or having an accident. In some ways, we kind of followed the 3 day method which is HERE, but we stretched it out. For about a week or two after this, we would put a diaper on her when we went out to run errands, but eventually she became able to tell us when she had to use the washroom and we could rush her to a toilet ASAP while she held it.

How long can you expect accidents?

Molly still had the occasional accident for several weeks after we started training her. It took her a LONG time to be able to #2 on the potty/toilet too, and this was a major issue (but apparently normal). She has had a sporadic accident once or twice in the past month if she is extremely distracted, because we don't periodically ask her if she needs to use the bathroom anymore (she just tells us).

Rewards?





I should also mention that we rewarded her with treats for the first week or so. 1 Skittle or 1 M&M or 1 mini marshmallow for using the potty, and 2 if it was a #2 on the potty.

I'll update this post once we train Molly at night too with any tips we might have for that component of training. I know a lot of people do it all at once, but we just weren't quite ready yet (and Molly was not in a single bed until closer to Christmas so she was still in a crib when we trained her).